Chapter 84:
2039 was the year that there was a huge wave of magical children turning 11. While the traditional magic schools on Earth tended to considered age 11 to be the year to begin magical education, Starfleet education had been for decades teaching magic as soon as accidental magic first occurred. They later added, under controlled conditions, trying to cause accidental magic to occur. Nothing as harsh as Neville Longbottom being thrown out of a window when he was a child to cause him to save himself with magic.
After the first demonstration of magic by a student, Starfleet School would teach controlling magic and emotions. They were taught meditation, occlumency, and intention. Most planets followed the same plan, since they wanted to maximize magical ability. Most also followed the Starfleet educational plan of beginning formal magical education at the age that individual students were ready for it. This was especially important for species that might have had different typical developmental stages than humans.
With a great shortage of magical teachers much of magical education was taught by non-magicals. Magical teachers would circulate around and help where needed instead of teaching regular lessons. Online presence was heavily used also. Planets with new magical populations also needed quick response teams to fix the results of accidental magic.
By 2039 much more of the Federation Alliance was also in the United Federation with combined economic policies and to some extent governance. The legal systems became more unified as well. Ways were found to incorporate important traditions of varied cultures in the legal systems.
Varied biology of species also needed to be accounted for in the legal system. There was already much precedent with the Ions and Devronians each resembling glowing liquid metal without a clear demarcation of individuals of their species. On Earth, whales and dolphins were considered citizens, as were several types of magical sentients.
The original group of Talarians were doing well in Starfleet Academy. Some more Talarians joined Starfleet in the years since. Talaria itself had an alliance with the Federation Alliance, and were following a long term path to fully join the Federation Alliance.
New France was established. That was the last of the Earth based new colonies seen in canon star charts. There was much discussion as to what its charter would be, other than language. Eventually it was decided that the colony could have a culture that evolves and not tied to any particular era of history. For tourism there were several locations setup to be closely modeled on different periods of French history. One section reflected the more nostalgic aspects of parts of the 20th century, with technological vehicles resembling 1950's French cars, complete with yellow headlights.
The Federation Internet helped form a combined culture. The devices tied to it tended to become the ones that most people used, supplanting existing technology on planets. However, there were many who didn't like what they saw as a foreign culture taking over. The Federation allowed enclaves that maintained particular cultures and even those that excluded people. This precedent was established at its very beginning when the Vulcan monastery of P'Jem didn't allow non-Vulcans, except for some specific short visits. Even when they actually allowed two non-Vulcans to permanently join them, they still were allowed to pick and choose who was allowed there.
Cultural enclaves could only maintain caste systems if their participants wanted to participate. There was frequent checking of this. On Earth, house Elves were frequently interviewed to make sure that they wanted to continue serving. They were told that they could gain the magic they needed from other sources if they wanted to and noone could be considered property of others in the Federation. Very few Elves chose that option, but it did ensure that "bonded hosts", as they were now referred to, of Elves treated them well.
Cora and Theo's daughter, Pythia, born in 2029, was a seer. When she was five years old she told Ekdotis and Xenophilius, "Uncle Ekdotis and great grand-pa, you need to hire people everywhere now. News of the Federation will be really big if you do that, and great grand-pa, more will read the Quibbler. And hire Orions because they know a lot."
They followed her advice and it worked just as she said. We also started including her in Section 31. When she was 11 she told us, "Uncle Q asked who from canon I wanted to learn from."
Then she relayed her conversation. Pythia said to Q, "I was thinking of the Metrons. They like peace so much that they'll kill those wanting to fight each other. I also think the Prophets are interesting."
Q said, "The Metrons can be sanctimonious. They are powerful but they are not a good cultural ideal. The Prophets are complicated and let's just say that isn't going to happen, same with the Q continuum and I'll add Tralane to that."
Pythia said, "I know, the Tkon Empire. The one that had an automated outpost that captured the Enterprise and a Ferengi ship in the Next Generation, The Last Outpost."
On July 9th, 2041, we had a Picard family gathering at Starbase Sol, where many of us were living, to commemorate my being in this timeline exactly 50 years. Pythia said in a trance-like voice, "You and you and you and you have more time. I'll keep the timeline on track after."
At a Section 31 meeting that Pythia was invited to, she asked her Uncle Ekdotis to be there also. She said, "I saw it, but Uncle Ekdotis will have the evidence. Tell them about the victims of the Klingons, the Tholians, the Gorn, and Xindi."
Ekdotis Lovegood said, "I sometimes receive information off the record, not yet to publish. I'll share it here with the assurance that no law enforcement actions will be initiated based on this information, including by doing independent investigation based upon this information. In the past my sources have told me about some quite unpleasant crimes to test my ability to not turn them in."
I said, "We will not pass anything confidential on, and we'll only deal with timeline level challenges."
Xenophilius said, "They seem to be unaware of magically binding pledges. We are always ready to respond to requests for them."
Ekdotis said, "The confidential information I am going to relay is that a group is gathering evidence of mistreatment of different species by all of the Federation's neighboring empires. They plan to release the evidence in a coordinated way to sway public opinion towards the Federation expanding its control to those areas."
I said, "Now we have our timeline challenge. When the Supervisor group told us that our plans for these empires were not ideal, they did not mention that it wasn't the details of our eventual involvement that would be the problem, but instead would be the domestic effect of our lack of involvement."
Theo said, "We don't try to stop this momentum, we get behind it."
Luna agreed, "By the time that evidence becomes public, we will have already been advocating the same thing, preventing this from causing dissension within the Federation. The side advocating intervention has strongly held beliefs and is growing, the one against is mostly uncertain. The hardcore no optional wars side still exists, but the Federation has expanded since they held the majority of the votes."
Section 31 met with the Federation Alliance, I presented, "We have postponed dealing with the nearby empires. We have intelligence that this lack of action will drive the Federation apart with significant elements demanding that the subject planets of those empires have the same rights as those in the Federation since we have the ability to protect them."
Luna said, "There is a movement that is gathering evidence and will present it suddenly and publicly. The Federation needs to be in the middle of considering expansion by that time or those elements will start to discount the effectiveness of Federation leadership."
The Starfleet Chief of Staff Zurim bav Gruth, a Tellarite, said, "Amateurs say what a military should do. Experts talk logistics. Put it to a vote that the stardate 2042 upgrades will go on fast cycle, followed by a massive building program of new ships. Each will cost many credits. Then we can plan tactics."
The Starfleet Academy Chief said, "Mission specialists already can handle any duty on a starship, so there should be enough crews to operate the new ships. We can release specialists from Starfleet Academy after four years to serve in this war, then they can return to the academy to complete their specialty education. They can do some of that while serving on active duty starships. Starfleet Academy will need to know if the fleet increase is expected to be permanent and therefore we would need to expand incoming classes for graduation in stardates 2046 and beyond."
Luna said, "Let us make these debates public, and have each planet decide how they should vote, and then have the Federation Alliance vote. Just the ongoing debate, assuming it looks like the war side is winning, will predispose some of the empires to agree to terms instead of actually needing to invade."
Starfleet intelligence discovered the day that the coordinated demonstrations were going to happen. Five days before that the press reported that the Federation Alliance wanted each voting member to decide if it was time to extend sentient rights to that of nearby empires. Various forms of evidence of poor treatment of worlds within empires were reported. It was announced that if the vote was yes, then the budget of Starfleet would be increased significantly and that there might be years of warfare.
The demonstrations went on schedule, but now it had the appearance of supporting a Federation Alliance initiative instead of opposing Federation Alliance policy. There were detailed stories from every empire. Some people who had escaped from the empires gave personal testimony.
At the same time there was much coverage in the press of former colonies of the Romulans. 14 years later, all sorts of success stories were shown. Even Romulans were interviewed, saying that their lives had improved in the last 14 years, and that having an empire did not directly benefit them, while the Federation membership did.
The decision of each voting member of the Federation Alliance was due on stardate 2041.84, which was about 55 Earth days before the end of the year 2041. Each planet or other voting society was encouraged to have their own ratification of their vote, possibly through a referendum or other method of making a decision within their society's culture. If the overall Federation Alliance vote were no, there would be the usual slow upgrade process of starships to save credits. If yes there would be a fast swapping in of components, and only having combat effective upgrades, except other ones that only have a very minor cost in credit and time. Then as soon as upgrades are complete, each shipyard would start building new ships.
There was no concept of one sentient one vote in the Federation Alliance. Instead the size of the economy of each voting member was measured and resulted in an allocation requirement towards Starfleet and other Federation Alliance functions budgets and that resulted the number of votes that the society had.
Some planets decided to split their votes based on their results of a referendum.
The Vulcans and Denobulans voted no. However, with the expansion of the Federation over the last 14 years, they were not as a large a percentage as they were previously.
The Talarians rushed their membership in the Federation Alliance, agreeing immediately to its conditions, just to be able to join what they assumed would be a war. They and the other more warlike members of the Federation voted yes.
Many of the planets that were once under the influence or control of the Orions or the Romulans felt that they must vote yes, to extend the same benefits they received to other planets.
The Tholians sent envoys sounding out whether the Federation would agree to a Tholian only space, with an expanded area containing other species becoming Tholian protectorates. Those protectorates would not be allowed significant spaceship military assets either of their own, or in transit to them. They could trade freely with the Federation, and wouldn't be ruled by the Tholians, but no military assets would be allowed within the area of Tholian influence, except planetary defenses and lightly armed merchant ships. The framework was only considered in case the Federation Alliance voted yes to free the empires, and it was understood that there couldn't be a Federation answer until then. The Tholians argued that this arrangement would satisfy the stated reasons for the Federation attacking empires and the only reason why the Federation might not agree to it would be if they had hostile intent towards the Tholians.
Starfleet Intelligence reported that the Klingons were mobilizing for war and building new ships. There were all sorts of martial demonstrations among the Klingons. Klingons that Orion traders spoke to seemed to believe that the Klingons had better weapons ready to be revealed in case of war with the Federation.
When the final vote occurred there was a decisive majority to prevent empires having slaves of different species or ruling other species and planets without their agreement.
There was a great rush of people wanting to work in shipyards to help build the fleet. Former Starfleet ships crews asked to reenlist. They would have to be checked if they were still capable and then have to go through training and certification, but much less than new recruits.